Today's Stichomancy for David Letterman

"O no--quite different. Nor any pain of mind.
He was lucky enough to be God A'mighty's own man."

"And other folk--d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em,
Mister Fairway?"

"That depends on whether they be afeard."

"I bain't afeard at all, I thank God!" said Christian strenuously.
"I'm glad I bain't, for then 'twon't pain me....I
don't think I be afeard--or if I be I can't help it,
and I don't deserve to suffer. I wish I was not afeard at all!"

There was a solemn silence, and looking from the window,
which was unshuttered and unblinded, Timothy said,

The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo:

the while his hostess was mentally dubbing him a "dull person."

"What an abstracted man he is!" she said before he was down the
front steps.

"Is he really so clever in business?" a woman friend inquired.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" commented a third, and his host
apologised for the absent Alfred by saying that he was no doubt
worried about a particular business decision that had to be made
the next morning.

But it was not the responsibility of this business decision that
was knotting Alfred's brow, as he walked hurriedly toward the
hotel, where he had told his office boy to leave the last mail.

impressions of the snow-storm, the sledge-shafts, and the horse
with the shaft-bow shaking before his eyes, kept passing
through his mind, then he remembered Nikita lying under him,
then recollections of the festival, his wife, the
police-officer, and the box of candles, began to mingle with
these; then again Nikita, this time lying under that box, then
the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his
house with its iron roof with Nikita lying underneath,
presented themselves to his imagination. Afterwards all these
impressions blended into one nothingness. As the colours of
the rainbow unite into one white light, so all these different